What's the difference between accent and twang?

Accent


Definition:

  • (n.) A superior force of voice or of articulative effort upon some particular syllable of a word or a phrase, distinguishing it from the others.
  • (n.) A mark or character used in writing, and serving to regulate the pronunciation; esp.: (a) a mark to indicate the nature and place of the spoken accent; (b) a mark to indicate the quality of sound of the vowel marked; as, the French accents.
  • (n.) Modulation of the voice in speaking; manner of speaking or pronouncing; peculiar or characteristic modification of the voice; tone; as, a foreign accent; a French or a German accent.
  • (n.) A word; a significant tone
  • (n.) expressions in general; speech.
  • (n.) Stress laid on certain syllables of a verse.
  • (n.) A regularly recurring stress upon the tone to mark the beginning, and, more feebly, the third part of the measure.
  • (n.) A special emphasis of a tone, even in the weaker part of the measure.
  • (n.) The rhythmical accent, which marks phrases and sections of a period.
  • (n.) The expressive emphasis and shading of a passage.
  • (n.) A mark placed at the right hand of a letter, and a little above it, to distinguish magnitudes of a similar kind expressed by the same letter, but differing in value, as y', y''.
  • (n.) A mark at the right hand of a number, indicating minutes of a degree, seconds, etc.; as, 12'27'', i. e., twelve minutes twenty seven seconds.
  • (n.) A mark used to denote feet and inches; as, 6' 10'' is six feet ten inches.
  • (v. t.) To express the accent of (either by the voice or by a mark); to utter or to mark with accent.
  • (v. t.) To mark emphatically; to emphasize.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I think you're probably right that the accent does degenerate along with Richard.
  • (2) For now, he leans on the bar – a big man, XL T-shirt – and, in a soft Irish accent, orders himself a small gin and tonic and a bottle of mineral water.
  • (3) We describe a right-handed native American who developed a foreign accent following damage to the left premotor region and white matter anterior to the head of the left caudate nucleus.
  • (4) The accent in rheumatism orthopedics should gradually shift toward early preventive operation.
  • (5) He does not appear to have a regional or working-class accent.
  • (6) Fifty-three years on, he has a broad Yorkshire accent but still speaks fluent Urdu: a boon in a constituency containing places such as Bradford, where 20% of the population are of Pakistani heritage.
  • (7) I first moved to New York aged 11, and found my accent provoked a certain suspicion.
  • (8) As he was detained, the gunman, wearing a balaclava and a bathrobe, allegedly repeated twice in French with an English accent: "The Anglophones are waking up," an apparent reference to the "maple spring" of student protests against the government that contributed to the snap election being called.
  • (9) Executive producer, played by Emily Mortimer Boy, do they work to explain Mortimer's English accent… Anyway, she's the show's new Anglo-American chief.
  • (10) His Scottish accent was only fleetingly used, something kept up his sleeve, as he said, "like a dirk for tight corners".
  • (11) One girl with a Scouse accent sees me taking notes and says: "Oi, get up me dear… stop writing youse!"
  • (12) Instead, let's hunt down whoever told Van Dyke an English accent just involves adding "guvnerrrr" to every other sentence.
  • (13) Up the hill, the prince was trying out his schoolboy French – " C'est un honneur pour nous d'être parmi vous … merci votre patience avec mon accent " – and was cheered for doing so.
  • (14) Memory confusions of temporal patterns in a discrimination task were characterized by the same hierarchy of inferred accent strength.
  • (15) We meet in her home city of Cologne, and although she speaks with only the faintest trace of a foreign accent, vocabulary often escapes her.
  • (16) A special accent was laid on the formation of the sporulation septum and its alterations in the course of spore delimitation and separation.
  • (17) Similar rhythms preserved accent coupling, whereas dissimilar rhythms did not.
  • (18) The Lib Dem and Labour leaders have Yorkshire seats, but neither possesses the matching accent.
  • (19) His film, The Angels' Share, a larky whisky heist, was screened with English as well as French subtitles at the festival, lest the Glaswegian accents prove a barrier for non-Scots.
  • (20) These are, in chronological order, Johann August Wilhelm Hedenus (the elder; 1760-1834), Friedrich August von Ammon (1799-1861) and Eduard Zeis (1807-1868); Zeis' career is reviewed briefly here with the accent on Dresden.

Twang


Definition:

  • (n.) A tang. See Tang a state.
  • (v. i.) To sound with a quick, harsh noise; to make the sound of a tense string pulled and suddenly let go; as, the bowstring twanged.
  • (v. t.) To make to sound, as by pulling a tense string and letting it go suddenly.
  • (n.) A harsh, quick sound, like that made by a stretched string when pulled and suddenly let go; as, the twang of a bowstring.
  • (n.) An affected modulation of the voice; a kind of nasal sound.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Having personally witnessed their live act (Black Flag frantically twanging Bootsy’s Rubber Band) at Dingwalls in late August, I thought I’d made a great discovery until, two breathless days later, and a mere few hours before they left these fair isles, the Peppers deposited their press kit in my lap.
  • (2) Only 18, the son of a US serviceman and a German mother speaks English with a distinct Teutonic twang and is likely to be a game-changing option from the bench.
  • (3) However, the Nashville sound crossing the Atlantic isn't that of pedal steel guitars and twanging banjos.
  • (4) They represented scholarship, complicated lyricism, musical eclecticism and internationalism (as in Phife’s Caribbean twang) rather than street-corner parochialism; what hip-hop scholar and professor of global studies at New York University Jason King calls “the rise of a European, classically influenced concept of the artist in hip-hop; the rapper as more than a showman but a philosopher, individualist, soul-searcher”.
  • (5) He moved away from blues and jazz to concentrate exclusively on skiffle, transforming American folk songs by adding in a hefty beat and his distinctive nasal twang.
  • (6) In theory, there are initiatives – such as country-twanged theme songs and greater required alcohol consumption – that could incite soccer's urban, wine-sipping bourgeoisie to abandon their pretenses of supposedly Euro-centric civility.
  • (7) Simultaneous velolaryngeal videoendoscopy proved to be of great value for the understanding of the interaction of velar and laryngeal functions and for clarifying the mechanisms of nasal and twang qualities.
  • (8) But the headline band takes to the main stage and a fever swims in your eight-year-old blood, so we're acres away, pinned in a tent, the tent itself all membrane and fine net taking the drum's pulse, trawling the air for the twang of the bass and the singer's voice, and you sleep now in the curtained light, your face like the face in the back of a spoon, my lips to yours but for the merest breadth, mouthing the words, living your every breath.
  • (9) There is the voice, a crackling instrument coated with the dust and twang of an an eighth-generation Texan.
  • (10) "I wanted to start my own line of clothes – good denims, good T-shirts and dresses which are not really available in India," said the 28-year-old, who speaks with an American twang.
  • (11) The voice lowers and he leans forward to emphasise each word: “I did not come here to talk about US foreign policy in the Middle East, and I will not do it.” The Texan twang vapourises other efforts to elicit opinion.
  • (12) He hits a rising shot from a preposterous distance - and it twangs the post, Neuer mistakenly letting it go.
  • (13) And, for outsiders, it’s a solid preview of the personalities of the Democratic primary, barring any more candidates: Lincoln Chafee is a nice man; Hillary Clinton is formidably polished; Bernie Sanders is righteously angry;and Martin O’Malley will probably siphon energy and ideas from all of them, standing like a tall, handsome, safely male candidate with a slightly affected southern twang.
  • (14) I phoned him one morning to hear his Kent twang bark: "Can't talk, I'm chained to a petrol pump!"
  • (15) I’ve never been here and created as many chances as we made today.” For all the talk of twangs and tweaks Arsenal were still able to field a strong team with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Joel Campbell replacing the injured Santi Cazorla and Alexis Sánchez, and Mathieu Flamini and Aaron Ramsey manning a depleted central midfield.
  • (16) 12.02pm BST The standby list, part II Our understanding is that these are the seven names on Hodgson's standby list, each of them trying to be a good person but still secretly praying to the God of Hamstring Strains and Groin Twangs for a little help: Andy Carroll (West Ham) John Stones (Everton) John Ruddy (Norwich) Jermain Defoe (Toronto) Michael Carrick (Man Utd) Tom Cleverley (Man Utd) John Flanagan (Liverpool) All of which looks to me to be good news for Rickie Lambert, Ben Foster and a few others.
  • (17) Learmount has suggested that a combination of mechanical failure and pilot error could be an explanation “That could have been something in the mechanics or the engine, a twang, that would be tremendously distracting at a point when milliseconds matter.,” he said.
  • (18) It's just a bloke twanging a rubber band that's been stretched over a box of tissues.
  • (19) My first musical memory is the twanging, swooping space-age sounds of Joe Meek's "Telstar".
  • (20) Ronald Koeman had used his three substitutes – the first two after injuries to Jack Cork and Dusan Tadic following late tackles from Aaron Ramsey and Santi Cazorla respectively – when Toby Alderweireld felt a hamstring twang on 84 minutes.